Student research: Sydney Pindling

Sydney Pindling finished her senior project in the fall of 2016, under the supervision of professor Gabriel Perron. Sydney developed a promising new model to study the effects of antibiotics, such as streptomycin, on the animal microbiome. She exposed larval zebrafish (Danio rerio) to very low concentrations of streptomycin; in fact, the concentrations Sydney used were similar to that observed in in environment: rivers and streams near human settlements. Sydney found that that even at these low concentrations streptomycin changed the microbiome in the larval fish, and increased larva mortality. She also observed that the microbes in the fish gut were selected for genes associated with antibiotic resistance. These results may have relevance both for studies of antibiotic effects in humans, and for the environmental research of fish populations.